


save the doubts for after dark

by beardsley, orphan_account



Series: cancelling the apocalypse [3]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 21:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is assigned to be Steve's new co-pilot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	save the doubts for after dark

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Asobi Seksu.

'Initiating neural handshake in three, two…'

It was the first time they were in the drift together and there was a flash of white and blue and a rush of overwhelming grief and — rain pouring down, _'I'm not a coward,'_ Academy graduation day, shared dreams and shared thoughts, sweat-slick skin on skin and fumbling in the dark like getting off was a race, insulin shots, _'You're only in the programme because your mother pulled some strings,'_ rain pouring down, hours in the combat room, Sarah Rogers' funeral, rain pouring down, rain pouring down, James Barnes' funeral and rain pouring down —

Sam passed out.

~

'The trainees think he's cursed,' said Colleen three days earlier. She, Misty and Sam were in the canteen and Sam was still sore and aching from the workout Steve had put him through in the combat room. 'But hey, the trainees are a vicious and cowardly lot and —'

'— And you must strike fear into their hearts, yeah, yeah,' Misty finished, rolling her eyes. She impaled her last remaining meatball on one chopstick and shoved it into her mouth, prompting both Colleen and Sam to pull disgusted faces at her lack of manners, etiquette or anything resembling decorum. Between Misty and Luke, the air of ex-Marine cavemanhood could be a bit much.

Sam sighed. 'He's not cursed. He's just shit out of luck when it comes to co-pilots.'

'That sounds pretty ominous,' Colleen said. 'It's a wonder Monica agreed to give you two a trial run as it is. I'm not looking forward to you being the third of Steve Rogers' charming but also tragically dead partners.'

'Is that because you're worried, or…?'

Colleen snorted. 'Don't flatter yourself. You owe me four thousand yen.'

'Ouch,' said Misty. 'That's harsh.'

'Welcome to capitalism, girlfriend.'

Sam tuned out Misty and Colleen's bickering. They had graduated together; Sam was a year older, but he'd joined the Academy after a year of humanitarian aid work in South America. He'd always known the jaeger programme wasn't all there was to saving the world; giant robots could only go so far. He probably never would have signed up — the PPDC seemed too much like the military for Sam's comfort — if he hadn't ended up in Lima and met Marshall T'Challa, completely by chance.

Now Misty and Colleen had four kaiju kills and the highest sync ratio out of all the jaeger teams, Danny and Luke weren't far behind, and Sam was around rangers who have been piloting since they were seventeen, like Sharon. Monica kept telling him his drift compatibility stats were peculiar as Sam proved _in_ compatible with prospect after prospect.

And then Steve Rogers volunteered to train with Sam, and everything changed.

Or maybe everything just fit into place, like a puzzle Sam was trying to solve without knowing that the most important piece was missing. His first sparring session with Steve —

~

His first sparring session with Steve felt like it lasted hours and seconds at the same time. They exchanged a look and a nod; Sam put away the escrima sticks he was using up until then and Steve settled into an easy fighting stance, feet wide apart and shoulders tense.

There was no one else in the combat room; the session wasn't official, or even sanctioned by Monica. Steve just turned up on Sam's doorstep and asked if he'd like to go a few rounds — just to see if there was any point in them doing more advanced tests. Just to see if they would click, if there was any hope for them at all.

They started slow, moving from position to position with practised ease: strike, dodge, strike, parry. Sam caught himself defaulting to jiujitsu and Steve matched him without a word. The combat room was silent save for their breathing and soft noises they couldn't hold in each time a strike or a kick connected, and somehow it was natural and not surprising at all when Sam ended up on his back with Steve pinning him to the floor with a forearm against Sam's trachea.

'Two out of three?' he asked. His voice was low, though not winded.

Sam twisted beneath him to get his legs free, crossed his ankles over Steve's lower back and threw him off to reverse their positions. He straddled Steve's waist and caught the punch that would have bruised his collar bone.

'One-one.'

Steve grinned.

Something changed then: they went after each other with less finesse and more emotion and it was better. It was honest. Sam had been putting up a front — how couldn't he, facing off against one of the best pilots at the Midway Shatterdome? — but he dropped it, and he saw the moment Steve stopped fronting too. As soon as they were up again Steve grabbed him around the waist and threw him down, and Sam let out a moan as he was slammed into the mats tailbone-first. It didn't slow him down. He got away before Steve could pin him again, moved into a crouch and threw a kick that caught Steve right in the solar plexus. Steve rolled away, gasping.

The spar wasn't pretty, but it wasn't meant to be. It was dangerous, but something about it felt _right_. Steve could anticipate Sam's moves and it went both ways: they blocked one other's attacks like they'd been sparring together for years, like they knew their fighting styles inside and out. Except it wasn't a fight, it was something more personal and intense and it fed right into a space inside Sam he never realised was empty before now.

He missed the exact moment Steve's hands on him, both of them breathing hard and gasping in pain, stopped being about the spar or even about compatibility — because they were compatible, they were more than compatible, they moved and breathed in perfect sync, but Sam didn't care. Steve's thigh brushed his crotch as he threw Sam to the ground to try and straddle his hips to keep him in place, and Sam — Sam felt it, felt Steve's growl coiling in his stomach, hot and heavy. The next time Steve made a noise, any noise, it went through Sam like a thousand volts and he clenched his teeth on a helpless moan.

There was no way it could be taken as anything but what it was and Sam froze.

Steve stopped too, with his knees on both sides of Sam's hips. He supported himself on one hand, leaning low over Sam. His mouth was bruised from where Sam managed to elbow him in the face and his eyes were wide and dark, and it hit Sam like a two-by-four to the skull that he wasn't the only one hard in his gi pants right now.

Time slowed down to a crawl. Sam watched, as if in slow motion, as Steve licked his lips and reached down with his free hand to press the flat of his palm against the bulge in Sam's pants. Sam couldn't help it; he tipped his head back and tried to breathe, and there was nothing remotely platonic about the way his hips jerked up to meet Steve's hand.

There were a million things he could say to save face, but this wasn't the time or place for any of them. No masks, Sam thought a little deliriously. No masks and no regrets. They wanted to see if they clicked — and Jesus, did they ever. Sam had spent hours in this room training with countless trainees and pilots and it had never felt like this, not once. He never felt this close to another human being. He cupped the back of Steve's neck, rubbing small circles with his thumb. Steve swallowed and had to visibly force himself to talk, and what came out was —

'I need you with me.' Heat rushed to his face, and his voice was hoarse and more than a little desperate. More than a little broken. 'I can feel it. We're —'

'Yeah,' Sam managed. 'I know, I — I know.' He lifted one knee until his thigh was pressed between Steve's legs. Steve's eyes drifted half-shut and he bit his lower lip, breath catching.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to lean up to close the distance between them, so Sam did just that. For a second Steve went still, absolutely rigid, but before Sam could even start panicking Steve parted his lips and started to kiss back — slowly, carefully like he wasn't sure Sam wouldn't just disappear any moment. The kiss was chaste and unbearably gentle and Sam let Steve do it any way he liked, heart racing and blood roaring in his ears.

When Steve let him go, it was only far enough to say, 'I'm pretty sure that counts as a draw.'

~

'Initiating neural handshake in three, two…'

~

'I'm sorry about the —' Steve gestured vaguely with his hands. He was seated on Sam's bunk with his back to the wall, watching Sam fill out the report from their last field deployment in Redwing Delta (a beautiful piece of work, if Sam was any judge, though the paint job could still use a little tweaking). 'I mean, it can't be pleasant to not only have me in your head, but Bucky and my mother, too.'

Sam lifted his eyes to Steve. 'If I minded, I'd ask to be reassigned. You know that.'

'I do know.' Steve rubbed the back of his neck. His t-shirt rode down around his collar bone, and Sam had to fight the impulse to — something. Lick it. Or maybe grab Steve by the dog tags and drag him close, the way Steve had done last night. 'I know. You're really something else.'

'Nah, not really.' But then it was difficult to look at Steve and imagine a skinny kid from inland Alaska Sam saw in the drift, so maybe appearances weren't all that important. 'Folks are calling me the third time's charm behind my back, though.'

Steve laughed, a sharp sound that seemed shocked out of him. 'That is seriously tacky.'

'I know, it's goddamn awful.' There was a brief, companionable pause. Sam went back to his report, but it didn't hold even half the appeal of just being with Steve. _Drift honeymoon_ , Sharon called it with a knowing smirk. Sam didn't care if they were obvious, though, and neither did Steve. They fit, puzzle pieces slotting into place with their edges snug against one another. Nothing else mattered.

'Is drifting always like this?' he asked before he could stop himself. When Steve blinked in confusion, Sam waved a hand between them. 'You know, this strong, or intense, or…'

Steve blinked again. There was a faint blush creeping up his neck. 'Oh. That. I — well, I worked really well with my mother, and Bucky and I —' He stopped, mouth twisting in an expression Sam knew meant Steve was trying to keep his face neutral. He had seen through Steve's eyes Bucky Barnes dying, over and over; he'd seen through Steve's eyes Bucky Barnes kissing him, over and over. Maybe in another world Sam would be jealous, but not here. He felt what Steve felt, both for Bucky and for him.

It was almost frightening just how much emotion Steve kept under wraps, how much passion. Guilt and hope and dogged stubbornness were all twisted up inside him.

'You hit it off,' said Sam when it became obvious Steve wasn't going to finish.

'Yeah. We hit it off.' Steve slid off the bed. He was a big guy, tall, all wide shoulders, but he could be sneaky like a ninja when he felt like it. Sam wasn't even done putting away his report — he knew what was coming from the way Steve's expression went dark — when Steve was suddenly in his space, pushing him back. 'We hit it off,' he said again, low and warm, and Sam knew he wasn't talking about Bucky this time.

Talking was overrated, anyway.

~

Standing still in the cockpit, hands sweating in his gloves as he held them steady on the controls, Sam tried to practise the first lesson the Academy had drilled into him: breathe. The mission wasn't typical, but then the kaiju's behaviour wasn't typical either. It didn't seem to be in a hurry to get to shore, but Monica gave the order. The sooner they killed the thing, the less chance of it slipping through the Midway Strike Group's watch to the less heavily protected areas.

'Air support disengaged,' Steve said. The jaeger lurched, and they both had only enough time to clench their teeth before they hit the water.

Sam flicked off the propeller controls. 'Deactivating engines three through five. We're good to go.'

The first step underwater was always hardest, but after that the thousands of tonnes of machinery and steel pushed forward through momentum more than Steve and Sam's efforts. The comm crackled to life, a short burst of static followed by Maya's voice:

'Redwing Delta, you're in the clear. The area you're approaching contains an unnaturally high level of sulphur. Keep your eyes open.'

'Wilco. Thanks, Ms Lopez.' Steve turned to smile at Sam, wide and more alive ( _happy_ ) than Sam had ever seen him. The drift kept them connected and he felt all the hope and apprehension and bone-deep trust going through Steve's head and knew Steve got a matching feedback from him. They weren't at Misty and Colleen's level of neural sync-up yet, but something told Sam they might be one day.

He mirrored Steve's grin and together, they moved as one.


End file.
